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Students bomb in exercise

David Wroe

It was one thing for trainees at the elite military police bodyguard unit to miss two fake bombs hidden in a car's glove box during an exercise.

It was quite another thing that the car, rented from Hertz, was returned to the hire firm's Sydney Airport office with the mock improvised explosive devices (IEDs) still inside.

The blunder, outlined in an investigation report obtained under freedom of information, sparked a major bomb scare and a partial shutdown of the domestic airport car park that lasted several hours on July 4.

In the end it fell to Hertz cleaners to find the devices nearly a fortnight after the car was returned to the airport.

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Although the devices were ''inert'' and ''posed no threat to the safety of the public'', they looked real enough to Hertz staff. The car rental firm called the police ''due to the realistic nature of the two devices'', the report by the Australian Defence Force Investigative Service states.

Bomb disposal experts from the Australian Federal Police spent several hours examining the fake IEDs, a favoured weapon of insurgents in countries such as Afghanistan.

Hertz checked their records and found the car was one of several vehicles hired for 6½ weeks by the Defence Police Training Centre at Sydney's Holsworthy Barracks.

An officer from the centre confirmed the devices were used in exercises for students training to become ''close personal protection operatives'', or CPPOs.

CPPOs are elite bodyguards assigned to protect senior defence personnel and politicians when they travel to dangerous countries such as Afghanistan.

Lieutenant Commander Robert Dokter, executive officer of the training centre, told investigators ''the devices had been hidden inside the vehicle as part of a training activity … but they had not been discovered''.

The officer who rented the cars had gone on holidays by the time the students finished the exercise, the report states. ''As a result … the devices were … left in the vehicle when it was returned to Hertz.''